


to sing; to scream

by babytriumphant



Series: welcome to chicago, where you are from [3]
Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: 12x100, Gen, Rated for swearing, firestarters!justice and edric, guilt and grief, mentioned incinerations, the Chicago Firefighters Alternate Emotions (tm)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:08:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29649033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babytriumphant/pseuds/babytriumphant
Summary: Tyreek gives her the blindfold and calls her Justice. (A 12x100 about Justice Spoon and the Alternate modifier.)
Relationships: Justice Spoon & Edric Tosser
Series: welcome to chicago, where you are from [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1935640
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12
Collections: We Are Fanwork Creators





	to sing; to scream

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to Lewis Attilio, who has been inspiring this entire format. 
> 
> Also shoutouts to [Mads](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedsaint/pseuds/crookedsaint) and [Stara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Novelsinourheads/pseuds/Novelsinourheads) for the beta; glad I could share it with you two, noted Alternate Justice Feeling Havers, before releasing it to the general public. Also, big thanks to the Firefighters discord for going AAAH ROBBIE at all the appropriate times; it fuels me. WAFC. 
> 
> For the uninitiated: Justice is an animated statue; she was one of the Firefighters' Alternates alongside Edric Tosser. Tyreek, who sprung fully formed from the Calder's Flamingo statue in Chicago, gave her the name and blindfold of Justice. Justice also got the Fire Eater modification at the end of S9.
> 
> Title adapted from Hozier's Arsonist's Lullabye. Sue me.

1\. Tyreek gives her the blindfold and calls her Justice. It’s soft against her fingers: softer than anything else in this godsforsaken city. It weighs heavier in her hand than she expects, like a burden, like an honor. 

“It’ll look good on you,” Tyreek promises. He is all sharp teeth, flaming eyes. Everyone is in love with him, a little; Justice is no exception. 

She musters up the bravado she knows she’s supposed to feel. “Is that right.” 

“The fuck are you looking for my validation for?” 

The last thing she sees before darkness is the wicked edge of Tyreek’s smile. 

* * *

2\. She sees it in her fitful dreams, sometimes, in shades of stone and alabaster. A fire, the shape of a horrific beast, smile big enough to swallow her, big enough to swallow everything. Tiger tiger, burning bright; tells her she is putting the world to rights.

In those dreams her iron bones are hollowed like a bird’s, and when she sets the fire free the void in her chest fills with a foreign, helium exhilaration that tastes like schadenfreude. She watches the city burn from above, and in her throat is nothing but aching relief. She’s done the right thing. 

* * *

3\. Tyreek gets into a fistfight with an umpire over something stupid and gets incinerated for his trouble. 

Justice does not grieve, but she does go to Calder’s Flamingo and heat the thing, piece by agonizing piece, until the whole statue is just melted scrap, until Chicago understands that enforcing rules has its own kinds of consequences, until they know Justice Spoon will be the judge jury executioner of those if she must. 

It’s not grief, she tells herself. It’s not grief; she can’t cry. Just revenge, pure and simple—eye for an eye is petty, but Justice is already blind. 

* * *

4\. When they get pulled through realities Justice can feel her echo: confused but calm, overwhelmed but serene, afraid but unruffled. 

“Who are you,” Justice tries to ask. She has never felt anything except watched, hunted, and alone. The other version of herself doesn’t answer. Maybe Justice didn’t manage to get the words out. 

Justice stumbles into a space she doesn’t recognize: the ground is dewy grass under her feet, not the bare, hard earth she’s used to, and the air is free of soot.

“Justice?” That’s Edric, small hand tucked in her elbow. “I don’t think we’re in Deerfield anymore.” 

* * *

5\. The other-her wore the blindfold too. Not to shut out the distractions of the material and focus on the passion within, like Tyreek once taught her, but to focus on her ability to listen to others, to invest in them without judgment. ‘Justice’ is ‘equity’, here. 

Justice doesn’t know whether that’s amusing or revolting. Still, though: every time she thinks about taking the blindfold off, something in her resists. Edric is twitchy, hands aching for something to light aflame, but Justice feels the weight on her shoulders slowly dissipate, like embers winking out on the biting lake effect winds.

* * *

6\. “Where did our version of you guys go?” Suzanne. “Is it like—bad?” 

Justice can feel Edric’s eyes on her, and Dispatch crackling in the back of her mind. “No,” Edric says, because Edric is a firebug: cherishes the changing of things, the tearing it down, crumbling burning bricks under burning fingers. 

They’re thinking different things. Justice had never exulted as Edric had: she had simply done what needed doing. Nothing more, nothing less. 

“Sometimes,” she murmurs. It’s better here, to do as needs doing. Not so guilt-inducing, no matter how hard she’d tried to ignore her own regret.

* * *

7\. She dreams regularly but infrequently: she stands on the crown of a building she’d burned seven times in her original life, face to face with the city she’s only heard rumors of: featureless gas mask crowned with red flowers in bloom, hips girded with the gold of her city.

This Chicago is gentler, less stifling. This Chicago takes Justice in one of her four broad palms and says, in a staticky crackling hum like a hundred thousand people,  _ You have a place here. You are safe.  _

Justice can’t cry, even in dream. But she would, she thinks, if she could.

* * *

8\. “Where did you go?” Edric’s hands are hot against her cheeks, like he might combust if he doesn’t get the chance to inflict it on something or someone else. “Justice. Justice, I don’t want to be gentled. I need hel—” He swallows. “I need you.” 

Justice closes her eyes beneath her blindfold, hard, and wraps her stone fingers around Edric’s flesh ones. “I cannot be what you ask of me,” she tells him. “I need to be someone different. I need to be someone I want to be.” 

Edric’s breath shudders. “Fuck,” he says. “Fuck, Justice, I’m gonna miss you.” 

* * *

9\. Herein lies a conflict: Justice will not miss Justice. 

She goes on her own to Calder’s Flamingo. The Tyreek here is dead, too, but this Chicago’s funerary memorial was not to take apart what remained of him. Instead there is a small shrine at one of the sculpture’s legs: flowers, votive candles, bowls of fruit. The citizens of this Chicago are clever: as they leave, they blow out any candles they lit. 

Justice sits, cross-legged, a hundred yards away, and listens to the people who come to pay their quiet respects.

It is comforting to know that here, memory endures. 

* * *

10\. It aches, though, restraint. She misses the warmth of the fire, the way it’d heat her whole body, suffuse her with light, make her feel whole—even if for only a moment. 

But there are other things. The blaseball seasons roll in and out. There is the exhilaration after the championship, and the whole of the city’s glee. There is Goobie Ballson, who gives excellent hugs. There is Edric, finally laughing again, even if they don’t talk much anymore. 

The itch doesn’t go away. But it goes quiet when Dispatch gets loud, and that—that is good enough, for now. 

* * *

11\. They’re taking a bus back from Hades. Everyone else falls asleep. Justice keeps silent vigil. There is a hollow place in her chest, all the way down to her bones, that is dark and quiet and longs for the blaze. 

“Am I doing the right thing,” she asks Edric, asleep across the aisle. 

He doesn’t answer. She doesn’t expect him to. 

After all, the first part of their firefighter training had been: there is no one answer. You approach every fire a different way. Circumstances define response. It used to be simpler. It used to be: In crisis, apply flame.

* * *

12\. Season nine ends. EMERGENCY ALERT: SEVERE SOLAR ECLIPSE WARNING is apparently on every news feed.

Butt, shuffling tiredly, comes in with three documents. “Orders from Chicago. She says we’re to prepare.” Alvarado gets one. Johnson, another. Butt crinkles the last in his fingers; says, “I think this suits you best, Justice.” 

“What is it,” she asks. In the back of her head she can hear Dispatch, quietly reassuring.

Their words smile. “Another way to fight fire.” 

She takes the slip of paper. It is featherlight, and feels like freedom.

Chicago puts her on the field, and they call her Magmatic.


End file.
